With machine learning becoming central to most business plans, Google is out there showcasing just how good they can be at Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, even on this simple, fun scale, to ensure everyone knows they are in the box seat.

This week I’ll showcase the range of experiments they have going on, with the first; Quick, Draw! A game that challenges you to draw different objects, while Google tries to guess them instantly as you continue to complete the picture. Think of it as the most fun game of Pictionary ever. You can play it here.

Three young creatives; Jennifer Garcia, Carl Larsson, and Mishal Jagjivan wanted to help bring more awareness to the reality of Domestic Abuse, by flipping it on its head with existing advertising being hijacked and turned into their awareness campaign.

With thousands of women featuring in advertising posters and billboards around the world, it’s common place for derogatory words and images of sexual and physical abuse to be scrawled on these ads, often just as harmful as the ones delivered face to face. But verbal insults and harassment linger only in our memories.

So this creative crew took defaced ads made to hurt women, and defaced them ourselves to turn them into ads against women abuse. Because if abuse against women happens openly in public, what happens in private?

How do you launch Halloween at an amusement park? You invite test subjects for a sneak peek of the year’s fancy new horror attraction, build up the atmosphere and suspense for a scary virtual reality experience. But instead, give them something even worse… A Real Experience. Created by the guys at DDB Gothenburg, Sweden.

Intel missed the mobile revolution, but they don’t want to miss what ever becomes of the virtual reality era. And with their processing power, they have the ability to remove “The Cord” that your Oculus and HTC units have and deliver an all-in-one device that you can take anywhere… Here’s a peak into their lab. Pretty cool.

So artist Brian Kane has transformed one of those famous Billy Bass Fish into an Amazon Alexa, by using a RasberryPi processing unit and the Alexa API, creating a slightly disturbing, but much more fun “Alexa” for the home! Expect to see more of this as the IOT world collides with art and design to create more useful and interesting connected objects for brands and art.

Netflix’s new Halloween Doorbell gives trick-or-treaters a scream while you continue to stream, with the DIY Halloween Doorbell (comes complete with build instructions) transforming your home into a trick-or-treaters’ delight while you never leave the TV…

You hang the Halloween Doorbell right over your existing one, so trick-or-treaters can’t find bother you. Then as trick-or-treaters approach your door, a proximity sensor in the doorbell will trigger the theme song from your chosen Netflix show! Then pressing the doorbell initiates a scream-mix from that show and unlocks a customisable message to your visitors on an LCD display screen shown right there in the doorbell. Pretty cool. Find out more here.

A day before the big a Apple event to introduce new Macs… Microsoft launch this. The Surface Studio PC that looks more like the most amazing Macbook meets iMac meets iPad you’ve ever seen, but with a killer haptic control device and an amazing hinge that lets the computer become a tablet of sorts.

Oh yeah, and the product intro video is as good as any to launch a new device. Well played Microsoft. You can pre-order now for $2,999. Not bad hey?

BMW just released “The Escape” film moments ago, featuring the All-New 2017 BMW 5 Series and an all-star cast. Clive Owen, Dakota Fanning, Jon Bernthal… And it’s epic. Ok sure, you can’t compare it to an action feature film, regardless of the stars featuring, but for a brand to gamble on this is both bold and exciting to see. Well played BMW. You can find out more here.

If you’ve worked in advertising, or studied it, you’ll know these ads. Perhaps the best of all time for Volkswagen, or indeed the entire auto-industry, becoming its own legendary status. So British filmmaker Joe Marcantonio, created a fantastic new documentary called “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” where he explores the dynamic and exciting power of advertising to help brands win the hearts and minds of consumers. It’s 18 minutes. Grab a coffee and enjoy!

So Red Bull is hacking payphones in São Paulo to turn old infrastructure into a smarter city landscape as part of its promotion for Red Bull Basement, a festival designed to inspire change in the city through the use of new technology applications.

Basically they are hack the city for the better. Red Bull “Smart Payphones” are a new hybrid-system that connects the location of the payphone, with bus timetable and location information to help move people around the city. Pretty cool stunt. Created by the LDC Agency in São Paulo.

Mark Zuckerberg this week demoed the future of Augment Reality / VR with new “Social Reality” vision that brings people to life inside their Virtual Reality experiences, connected by friends to create a social-reality type experience.

Inside the experience you can do just about anything; play games, view photos, talk as if you were in person or watch 360 degree videos, and perhaps… even have a sword fight! It’s a product they’ve been testing and releasing sneak-peaks of for a while, so it’s going to be interesting to see how they plan on taking this to the masses.

Remember “The Hire” was BMW’s first online film over a decade ago. It helped shape the future of online content, and now, they debut a trailer for the new BMW films “The Escape” which premiers in about two-and-a-half weeks.

The trailer is series of quick-cut, high-cctane scenes, with plenty of sheet metal, guns and a bit of blood in the mix. They managed to get Neill Blomkamp (of “District 9,” “Elysium”.. yep!) directing. Boom. Let’s see where this goes. Stay tuned to watch it here on Sunday October 23.

Dove has released its next instalment of the famous “Real Beauty” campaign with a fantastic piece called “Real Beauty Beats” created in Portugal, where men are exclusively connected to heart rate monitors for this new experiment to show their reactions when describing different women’s beauty projected on a screen.

Special models are shown first, generating only superficial praise related to their physical characteristics, while in the second sequence, photos of special women are unexpectedly shown to the participants, such as a partner or a family member. It’s from this point onwards, that emotion takes over the experiment. At this moment, the considerable increase in heart rate leaves no doubt – real beauty, literally, touches the heart. Created by the crew at Black Ship in Portugal.

Instagram is often a place to showcase the amazing life you live, so it’s no wonder when Louise Delage launched her profile, posting fantastic photos in exotic locations, boats and parties that people started to like her photos and follow her profile.

But in this brilliant piece by BETC called “Like My Addiction” actually turned out to be a campaign for Addict Aide in France. Who claim out of every five deaths of young people, one is from addiction of some form. Addict Aide provides help, finances and resources for people who are worried about their own alcohol consumption, or that of someone close to them.

So the Presidential Debate is the new Superbowl. With Audi setting the standard for an epic, unbelievable ad for the new RS7. Perfectly presented in reverse, you have no idea where the story is going, or why they are “Dueling” until the very end, of course, aligned to the Presidential Debate it makes so much sense and ensures everyone sits glued to it.

It wouldn’t be completed without some easter eggs, like elephant and donkey ice sculptures, plus a Presidential Tower, a mobile phone with classified emails, a dossier of classified documents flying around and even a copy of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Well played Audi. Well played. Watch it in reverse here...

So Snapchat is becoming a camera company. Or so they say, with the launch of “Snapchat Spectacles” a new smart glasses product that lets users instantly snap 10 second videos straight from the glasses that are soon to go on sale for about $130 a pair.

It’s a pretty big play for Snapchat, and while some will call this gimmicky I think it might be more on trend with the connected wearables that people actually want. It’s not trying to be Google glass. It’s just being fun, instant, sharable. And that’s it. Perhaps that’s what people will actually buy. Simple. Fashionable. Affordable wearable tech. What do you think? Check out Snapchat Spectacles here.

Ok, so meet Google Trips. Created to give you everything you need to have the best holiday ever, with an online/offline app that helps you plan your perfect trip, while suggesting local events, places to eat, things to do and all the best activities and experiences in that area. All powered with downloadable off-line content.

But the big play here is Data… Now google will know exactly where you’re going. When. And for how long. Then you’ll know when you get there. It’s a re-targeting and contextualised dream for Google to sell to marketers. You can download the app here.

With the Wearable industry continually expanding, so many new startups are entering the market via KickStarter, including this one, LVL (pronounced Level) which is a new take on the typical FitBit type band, with a focus on measuring hydration as the key part of the fitness tracker. It seemed a little niche to me, until I saw the near $500,000 backing on KickStarter! Check it out.

Well, Ken Block’s GYMKHANA NINE is here. There isn’t much else to it apart from 8 minutes of awesome driving. Which, weirdly seemed so much simpler this time around compared to previous GYMKHANA’s, didn’t you think? Or is it that Ken Block is making it look easier. I’m not sure. Either way. It’s sitting at almost 10m views just a few days in, compared to his last one in March this year, delivering 20m plus views…

The world’s first “Positivity Pump” that rewards select drivers in four cities around the world to demonstrate the brand’s new “global positivity system” which uses IBMWatson AI technology to evaluate how positive people are around the world, and depending on how the world is feeling, and the customer at the pump, is how much free petrol (and what cool experiences) they’ll unlock.
Created by The Martin Agency + Commonwealth/McCann.